What happens when "The Perfect Storm" does not miss the shore? On this date 65 years ago, The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 struck without warning from meteorologists, an event that has been described as the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Four days of heavy rain preceded the storm, so that the direct damage from winds were followed by an enormous flood that swept away homes, businesses and 682 lives in New England and Long Island. (Read more ... )
In a story in this morning's New York Times, the effects in the Connecticut River Valley were remembered with a link to the text of that morning's front page story.
At the mouth of the river, the day started sunny, and Katherine Hepburn, then 31 was visiting her family home at Fenwick. She was having a swim when the skies darkened, the wind rose and within a few minutes, had collapsed the chimneys and torn a wing off their house. The family escaped through a window and watched their house swept into Long Island Sound. In her autobiography, "Me" she wrote: "Our house -- ours for 25 years -- all our possessions, just gone. My God, it was like something devastating and unreal, like the beginning of the world or the end of it."
In Hartford, the rain already had the Connecticut 12 feet above flood stage and rising at six inches each hour. The hurricane's rains hit on top of that, driving the Park River out of its banks and swelling the Connecticut to four times its normal width. It would finally crest at 35.4 feet -- 19.4 feet above flood stage. The Hartford Courant called it the most calamitous day in state history.
Journalist and mystery novelist R.A. Scotti detailed the hurricane through stories of how it affected individuals in "Sudden Sea". A book reviewer of Everett S. Allen's "A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane" told the story of one New Englander who lived through it: "On the day of the hurricane, a Yankee farmer received a package containing a barometer that he had ordered through the mail. No matter how many times he tapped it, the mercury remained stuck at the bottom of the glass. Finally, he re-packaged the 'broken' barometer and returned it to the post office. By the time he got back to his own property, his house had washed out to sea."
PBS, which made a movie about the storm, has maps, photos and teacher guidance materials at their site about the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, including a bibliography for further reading both on and off line.
A commemorative website maintained by the New Haven Railroad includes photos showing the destructive force of the hurricane that had the power to cast sea-going tugboats onto the tracks of coastal rail lines.
A more technical report on the storm carried by the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, a Department of Defense research unit, describes the damage: "The winds grew gradually during the morning of the 21st, and through the afternoon and evening, 80-100 mph winds crushed houses, knocked down trees, and lifted barges and boats onto land. Throughout New York and New England, the wind and water felled 275 million trees, seriously damaged more than 200,000 buildings, knocked trains off their tracks, and beached thousands of boats (Haberstroh, 1998). Damage from the storm was estimated at $600 million. This value is in 1938 Dollars; multiplying by 10 provides an estimate in present currency. Considering that wind and rain damage extended as far north as Rutland, Vermont, that entire city blocks burned in New London and other industrial towns, and that downtown Providence, Hartford, and other cities were flooded, if this storm were to occur today, the cost of the damage wrought would be staggering."
Posted by dougsimpson at September 21, 2003 10:34 AM | TrackBack